


Dyscontrol

by Phrensiedom



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M, Original Character(s), Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Game(s), Self-Harm, Sexist Language, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:34:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrensiedom/pseuds/Phrensiedom
Summary: Ivy's and Simon's troubled past manifests in an unexpected and frightening way, raising questions about the safety of all three family members.
Relationships: Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	Dyscontrol

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Use of the words "slut" and "cunt" as insults.

Simon was thrust from stasis by the sound of sniffles and quieted sobs. His eyelids slid open, and he blinked a few times to orient himself. He was at home, in bed, with Markus lying on his stomach next to him, one arm slung over Simon's chest, and one leg draped over both of Simon’s legs. This was how he woke nearly every single day, with Markus touching or holding him in some fashion. It was comforting and made him smile, but in this particular moment, it was inconvenient. 

"Ivy?" Simon said, gently lifting and repositioning Markus' arm along his side. He sat up to discover the little android girl crouched next to the bed, hugging her knees to her chest and crying. As always was the case when she had a nightmare and needed support, her shoulders were cloaked by her ocean blanket, and she held her sea otter named Daisy to her chest. She did not react to her father’s words, so Simon slipped his legs out from beneath Markus’ and slid out of the bed to sit next to her on the floor. "Ivy, I'm here. May I hold you?"

Ivy drew in a gasping sniffle and nodded her head, her soft brown eye fixed on the opposite wall. Simon drew her small body into his lap and enfolded her in his arms. She snuggled in close and rested her head against his chest, closing her eyes. They sat in silence, save for Ivy's small gasping breaths, for a few long minutes, Simon gently rubbing her back. Quiet, being firmly held, and having her back rubbed almost always helped to soothe her, and her distress gradually eased, her breaths coming slower, deeper, and softer, until they had returned to normal.

"Did you have another nightmare?" Simon asked, now that Ivy could speak, lifting a hand to smooth her disheveled platinum blonde hair. It appeared particularly ghostly in the low light of the bedroom.

She nodded and wiped her eyes with her wrist, shivering lightly. Simon held his fingers over her right temple and noted her temperature sensing was still activated. He asked if she would like it switched off, and she declined, saying, "It feels interesting to be cold. Like a real girl."

"You are a real girl, Ivy. You're a real android girl."

Ivy grimaced at him, and she said, "That's not what I meant, Daddy."

Simon smiled sadly, noting she seemed to be in a foul mood, and said, "I know, little kitten." He pressed a kiss to her forehead and said, "Would you like to share your dream with me?"

Ivy curled up tighter and snuggled closer into his arms. She whispered, "I had the really bad one again.” She swallowed hard, and when she spoke, her voice was so soft as to be nearly inaudible. “He wouldn't stop hitting me with the bat, and my head just broke open like a pinata." She raised her fingers to the deep crack in the polymer of her head. "All my brain's electronic components spilled out, and it hurt so bad, and I was so scared.” She shivered again. “I could hear you and Dad screaming, but I didn't know where you were or how I could get to you." 

Simon did his best to suppress a shudder and failed miserably. Ivy patted his arm and, reflecting the words he had spoken to her innumerable times before, said, "It's okay, Daddy. He can't hurt us anymore."

Simon smiled down at her, his chest filled to bursting with pride, and said, "You're absolutely right. He can't." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and a smile flickered on her lips.

Picking at the pilling above the hem of her nightgown, she said, "Can I sleep with you and Dad tonight?"

"Ivy," Simon said, his voice low, a gentle warning. Tears had been shed over the subject many times, and neither father was in the mood to deal with it this night. "We've talked about this. You're a big girl, and big girls sleep in their own beds."

Ivy tucked her chin, whispering, "Please? I'm scared, Daddy." 

"You just said it yourself. He can't hurt us anymore."

She shook her head and said, "I'm scared of my dreams."

Simon stroked the curved line of her spine. "Dreams can't hurt you either. You know that."

"That doesn't make them not scary," she said, raising her voice from a whisper to an average speaking level. 

Simon hesitated, unsure how to respond, as she did make a valid point. He said, "I know, but sometimes we just have to deal with scary things in life that can't be avoided."

Ivy lifted her head and stared at him. Her brows drew together in a frown that was both sad and frustrated at the same time. She snapped, "But I can avoid the scary dreams by sleeping with you and Dad."

While she was merely following the logic of his explanations, Simon was beginning to weary of this back-and-forth. "We have to be brave sometimes, even when we don’t want to be." Her frown deepened, and he continued, "Come on, I'll tuck you and Daisy back in and rub your back for a few minutes." He moved to stand, but Ivy remained motionless, glaring at him. "It's time to go back to your bed."

"No," Ivy said, her tone firm. 

"Ivy, I'm serious. Stand up." Simon’s voice was equally unyielding. This was not up for debate. 

Ivy shook her head hard, her long hair whipping around her shoulders. 

Simon sighed, and said, "Okay, then I'm going to stand you up." He paused a moment to give her the opportunity to do it herself, watching her expectantly, eyebrows raised, before placing his hands beneath her arms. 

She shoved them away, saying, "No, Daddy."

Simon's eyes widened, stunned by this abnormal behavior. "Sleeping with us is not an option. Your options are to stand and walk back to your room, or I can carry you."

Ivy shook her head again, and Simon pinched his eyes closed. He had not yet needed to force her to do something, as she was always so cooperative and sweet, but he knew it had to happen eventually. 

"Okay, I'm going to pick you up now," he said, scooping one arm beneath her knees and one around her back. 

"No, no, no, no, no!" she cried, her voice rising with each word.

As much as it hurt to distress her, Simon had set an expectation, and he needed to follow through with it. The moment he began to stand, Ivy shrieked. Markus woke with an audible gasp behind them, his surroundings finally disturbed enough to break through his stasis protocols. Simon didn't hear him, though, as Ivy carried on, arching her back, kicking her legs, and lashing out blindly with her arms, managing to smack her father across the face, narrowly avoiding poking him in the eye, and smash her elbow into his arm, making his muscles falter and nearly drop her. 

"Ivy, Ivy, Ivy," Simon said, forcing his voice low and soothing, "let's take a deep breath and calm down."

The distraught little girl didn't even appear to hear him, her screaming only rising louder and her thrashing growing more intense, her closest arm repeatedly hitting Simon in the face, chest, and shoulder. To prevent her from being accidentally dropped, he lowered her to the carpet, where she continued to writhe and wail, slamming her limbs and the back of her head on the floor. 

"What's going on?" Markus said, his voice pitched up with fear and raised in volume to be heard over Ivy's piercing shrieks. 

Simon grimaced. This was the last thing his dangerously overstressed partner needed. Simon said, "I don't know. I was going to take her back to her room, and she freaked out." 

Ivy rolled over to push herself to her feet and immediately bolted for the bedroom door, her hair streaming behind her she was running so fast. She flung it open and sprinted down the hallway, leaving her stunned fathers to mentally catch up before hurrying after her. They finally caught up to her at the back door as she jumped and unlocked the deadbolt. Markus looped an arm around her waist as she twisted the doorknob, and Simon planted a hand on the door to prevent her from opening it and undoubtedly running off into the dead of night.

"Let me go!" she screamed.

Markus grabbed her hand and peeled her fingers from the knob before spinning around and setting her on her feet, while Simon relocked the door. 

"Let me go, let me go!" Ivy thrashed in Markus' hold, reaching above and behind her to claw at his face. She wasn't strong enough to damage him, but she was strong enough to startle him, and he released her, rearing back to avoid her fingers. 

She bolted past Simon, swiftly ducking beneath his reaching hands, but was pulled up short when he managed to grab the back of her nightgown. She strained against the resistance as hard as she could, snapping thread in the seams along her sides, but failed to free herself as her father took her left wrist. She pulled against this resistance as well, yanking hard enough to worry Simon that she might break her own arm with the force, and her feet slipped out from beneath her, causing her to fall and smack the back of her head against the floor, releasing a cry of both shock and anger. 

Both of her fathers winced involuntarily, and Simon said, “Ivy, please calm down,” his tone absolutely begging.

Sitting up, unphased by the fall and clearly not hearing or understanding her daddy’s entreaty, Ivy bit his hand as hard as possible. Incapable of feeling pain, Simon refused to let go and squatted above her, taking her opposite shoulder in his other hand. She arched her back and thrashed her limbs, hitting his chest, neck, and face, kicking him in the stomach, and all the while, screaming out each rapid, heavy breath she inhaled. 

“I hate you!” she shrieked. “You’re a vile, filthy slut, and I wish you were dead!”

Simon opened his mouth to try to reason with her again, when she began to purposefully smack the back of her head against the tile flooring, startling her father enough to release her. Instead of using the opportunity to run again, she rolled over and, raising herself on hands and knees, began banging her forehead against the floor, seemingly with as much force as her little yet powerful body could manage, shrieking, "Fuck you, you little cunt!" again and again and again. 

This, again, took her fathers a moment to process before they could launch into action. Markus placed his hand between her head and the floor, and Simon grabbed her arms and pinned them to her sides. She threw her head back, slamming it against Simon's shoulder hard enough to make him grimace with the discomfort that radiated down into the core of his body. 

"I'll kill you!" Ivy screamed. "I'll fucking kill you!"

"I'm taking her to the living--" Simon grunted as ivy's solid skull slammed into his shoulder again, "--room." 

He wound his arms around her stomach, her arms trapped between, and lifted her off her feet, turning to rush her from the small anteroom into the nearest carpeted room. Though she kicked and thrashed and bucked, they made it there safely.

Simon said, "Grab her feet." 

Together, they lowered her to the floor onto her back and, as gently as possible, held her limbs to the floor, while she struggled with all her might to break free, throwing curses and threats at them in her piercing child's scream. Markus briefly broke away to slide a folded blanket beneath her head to add extra padding to protect it, as she continued to hurt herself by slamming it against the floor, but they otherwise remained in place until she began to run out of steam and dissolved into tears.

“Daddy, I want to die,” Ivy sobbed, lifting her head and letting it drop to the blanket, her energy sapped. “Please kill me.” Her eye flitted over to Markus. “Please, Dad. Please. I don’t want to be alive.”

Her fathers’ eyes met, their expressions drawn, and a few minutes later, Ivy fell still, no longer straining against their hands. They simultaneously released her perhaps 30 minutes after she first began to escalate. Her face was wet with tears that continued to stream down her face, her whole body shaking, and she rolled to her side, curling into a ball and squeezing her eyes tightly shut. 

"I can take it from here, Markus,” Simon said. “Go back to bed.” 

His husband shook his head. "No, I want to stay."

Simon nodded and turned his attention back to Ivy, inclining his head to better see her face. He said, "Ivy, may I pick you up, so you and Dad and I can sit on the couch together and talk a little bit?"

Though she did not open her eyes, she gave a couple of quick, short nods, and Simon gently scooped her into his arms. She flinched when he touched her, making his chest pang painfully. He carried her to the couch and sat down, settling Ivy in his lap, still curled in a tight ball, his arms about her. Markus sat next to him, their shoulders touching. Even that small amount of physical contact with his husband helped to soothe Simon’s thrashed nerves.

“Could you please run a quick diagnostic to make sure you’re not injured?” he said to Ivy.

She nodded, and they all three remained silent for a few moments, until she whispered, “No new damage.”

“Good,” he said, “I’m so glad to hear that.” 

Markus bent closer to her level and swept the tears from her face with a light touch. She opened her eyes to look at him for a moment before closing them again, her expression remaining unchanged.

“We can talk about what happened tomorrow, but can you please tell me what you’re thinking about now?”

Her breaths coming in short, hiccupping gasps, Ivy raised her head and looked up at him, saying, "I hurt you. I don't want to hurt you, Daddy. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please don't make me leave. I don't wanna be alone again. Please.”

"Take a deep breath, little one. We don't want you to leave. Not now, not ever." Tears welled up again and slipped down her face. Simon gently brushed her badly disheveled and knotted hair back, and said, “We need you to understand we’re not mad at you, we’re not disappointed in you, and we don’t blame you for what happened. Okay?” Ivy nodded and swiped the arm of her nightgown across her eyes. “I think it’s time everyone went back to sleep. So, how about Dad and I tuck you into bed, and we’ll stay with you until you can go into status?” 

She nodded again, and Simon stood, leading the three back upstairs and into her bedroom. Markus pulled back the covers—in disarray from her nightmare earlier that night, and yet seemingly an age ago—and Simon lowered her to the mattress. Her dad covered her up but paused, raising his mismatched gaze to Simon. He said, “Daisy’s in our bedroom.”

“I’ll get her,” Simon said, stepping from the room and heading down the hall to retrieve it along with her ocean blanket. Reentering Ivy’s room, he found Markus had taken the plan quite literally and tucked the blankets beneath her all the way around her body. She gazed up at him with a flickering smile on her lips that solidified when she laid her good eye on Daisy. She broke through the seal of the well-tucked sheets to reach for her beloved otter, whom she crushed to her chest. Her fathers knelt on either side of her small bed, and Simon placed a kiss on her forehead, as did Markus. 

“We love you so much,” Simon said, pressing his hand to the top of her head and repeatedly stroking her forehead with his thumb. 

“More than anything else in the whole world,” Markus added, holding out his hand, which she gripped tightly. 

“I love you, too,” Ivy whispered, her lips trembling with threatened tears. 

“Oh, we know, sunflower,” Markus said. “We know.” 

Simon nodded in agreement with his husband and said, “Okay, time to close your eyes now and do your best to activate stasis.”

Ivy nodded and closed her eyes, at first squeezing them to force them shut, but within a few minutes, they had relaxed as she had dropped almost immediately into stasis, she was so exhausted from the events of the night. Her fathers waited a few minutes more to ensure she was indeed asleep before they crept from the bedroom and closed the door as silently as possible. They returned to the master bedroom, closed the door, and immediately collapsed against one another in a clinging hug, Simon trembling from head to foot.

“Sweet RA9, what was that?” Markus said, his voice choked with emotion. 

Simon paused for few long moments, his throat and chest clenched so tight with the rush of fear, sadness, and even anger he had been holding back that he couldn’t speak. Finally, he swallowed hard and managed to say, “My childcare programming indicates it was an anger outburst, which can happen with certain mental illnesses that are often caused by trauma.” 

The thought of Ivy experiencing such severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation as a result of her treatment in her past life, much of which he could have saved her from had he not been so cowardly, was overwhelmingly painful for Simon. He pressed his mouth to Markus’ shoulder, struggling unsuccessfully to suppress the urge to cry, and released a shuddering breath, tears rising in his eyes and dropping to the floor. 

“We should talk to Lucy tomorrow,” Markus said, his tone soft and patient. 

Simon nodded, and Markus turned his husband’s head toward him with light fingers placed on one side of his jaw. Simon leaned back from the close hug just enough to look him in the eye. Markus was known for remaining almost eerily calm through difficult situations, but he looked terrified, his brows pinched, his lips trembling, struggling to maintain full eye-contact. Seeing this made Simon’s stomach drop to his feet.

“Your stress level,” Simon whispered, barely able to speak. “What is it?”

Markus hesitated a moment longer than natural and said, “89%.”

It had never been so high before. Simon stared at him, his own stress level steadily rising. He said, “How high did it get tonight?”

Again, Markus hesitated slightly longer than he should have. “92%.”

“You’re lying,” Simon said. “What was it?”

“I’m sorry, Si, I can’t wo—” 

“Stop it. Just tell me the truth.” Simon’s expression had flattened, though tears continued to stream down his cheeks. 

“Okay, fine. 96%.”

Simon’s knees buckled, and he collapsed against Markus, who caught him and held him tightly. It was all too much, and he wept openly, no longer attempting to stifle the soft sobs that escaped from his lips or the shuddering breaths he drew. He was beyond overwhelmed with the realization that he could very well lose his entire family if it turned out this wasn’t a one-time occurrence. Simon couldn’t handle Ivy behaving like that on his own, but it was clearly far too dangerous to involve Markus. There seemed to be no way to address the problem without sacrificing one or the other of them. 

“Take a deep breath, sunshine,” Markus said, his voice having returned to tender. “It will be all right. I promise.” Simon was not convinced, and Markus seemed to anticipate this, as he continued, “We have Lucy, we have our friends, we have my dad and Leo. We are not alone in this.” 

This was more reassuring than Simon expected, and after a few minutes more, he was able to calm and pull away from the embrace to meet Markus’ gaze once again. Markus cradled his face in his hands and swept his thumbs beneath each of his eyes, giving him a sweet smile. Simon mirrored it, and said, “I’m going to sleep on Ivy’s floor to make sure she doesn’t run away or hurt herself or…” He trailed off, not wanting to think about the pleas she had made to them toward the end of the episode. 

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. You need as much rest as you can get.”

“As do you.”

Simon leaned in and kissed him, shivering at the feeling of Markus’ hand curling around the back of his neck, his thumb caressing the side of his throat. They separated after a few long moments and rested their foreheads together, eyes closing, their free hands clasping, and fingers interlacing.

“I love you,” Markus murmured.

“I love you, too,” Simon whispered. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

They separated once again, and Simon gathered his pillow and a few blankets before making his way to Ivy’s bedroom, where he spread them on the floor. He paused once this was done and knelt next to his daughter’s bed to cup half of her small face in his hand and watch her resting and recharging in stasis. 

“I love you, little kitten,” he whispered, placing a soft kiss on her temple and pulling the covers to her chin. 

Simon lay down on the floor and readjusted his own blankets, gazing at the glow-in-the-dark stars Ivy had begged her fathers to purchase and place for her on the ceiling until he, too, dropped into stasis.

**Author's Note:**

> The depiction of a therapeutic hold included in this work should not be taken as a recommendation or guide. Lying down holds are no longer considered an industry standard and are included here by necessity due to the lack of extra hands to help Simon and Markus. (Further, Ivy doesn't need to breathe, so there is no danger in a lying down hold.) Please do not reenact any part of this piece.


End file.
